Identifying and illuminating live Grateful Dead shows (and shows by band members) that are unknown or poorly documented.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

November 22, 1970: Middlesex County Community College, Edison, NJ

The Gym at Middlesex County College in Edison, NJ as it looked in February 2012 (photo-Corry)

The foundational text for the performance history of the Grateful Dead is known as the Janet Soto list. Sometime in early 1981, Grateful Dead office employee Janet Soto made a list of Grateful Dead concerts from January 1970 through December 1980. The purpose of the list remains unknown, but the implication seems to have been a financial one: a tax audit, financial planning or a similar analysis. The information source for the list seems to have been band contracts. The shows that were missing from the original Soto list were either added at the last second or arranged casually, such as free concerts or some Bill Graham shows in San Francisco. The Soto list was the foundation for all subsequent Grateful Dead concert scholarship, leading directly to Deadbase, Deadlists and other such projects.

I do not know why the Soto list began in January 1970, rather than earlier, but I can make a pretty good guess. Prior to 1970, the Grateful Dead's touring schedule was chaotic, and manager Lenny Hart had a vested interest in making sure that as few people as possible had any access to any paperwork that might say what the Grateful Dead were actually being paid. However, in February 1970, former Rolling Stones tour manager Sam Cutler took over the same duties for the Grateful Dead, and beneath his cool English bravado he was both organized and honest. I believe that the Soto list dates only from 1970 because it was only then that Cutler started keeping accurate records of Grateful Dead contracts, particularly for live performances.

Over the years, the Soto list has shown itself to be a remarkably accurate document. Shows that were not on the list turn out to have been added at the last second, probably without a contract (such as the Monday, November 16, 1970 show at Fillmore East), and shows on the list that did not occur turn out to have been canceled, which means there must have initially been a contract. Over the years, I have looked into some obscure events on the list, only to discover that they do indeed appear to have happened.

With that in mind, I am looking at a hitherto unnoticed event from the
original Soto list, in the hopes that we will
unearth some eyewitnesses or at least plausible rumors. According to the
Soto list, on Sunday, November 22, 1970, the Grateful Dead performed at Middlesex County Community College in Edison, NJ. While this show appears on every Grateful Dead performance list, to my knowledge nothing is known about this event. I have done enough research to make a plausible case for the concert, which I will present here, in the hopes that others will have more to contribute.

Middlesex County College, Edison, NJ
After 1946, the GI Bill allowed the many military veterans of World War 2 to attend college. The subsequent Baby Boom and the vast numbers of drafted soldiers meant that more and more institutions of higher education were needed in every area of the country. Besides a vast expansion in state university systems, most states also rapidly expanded community colleges (often called junior colleges), allowing local residents to attend the first two years of college effectively for free. The most successful of those students could move on to a four-year college. Most of the junior colleges were planned in the 1950, and they in turn opened for instruction in the late 1950s and early '60s.

Middlesex County College was founded in 1964. Middlesex County is about 30 miles Southwest of Manhattan. The principal city in the county is New Brunswick, home of Rutgers University. There are a large number of towns in the County, from Perth Amboy at the northern end, all the way down to Plainsboro in the south, next to Princeton (which is in Mercer County). Edison is in the center of the county, around towns like Metuchen, Woodbridge and Piscataway. My cousins actually grew up in Piscataway, so I know a little about the history of the area. Up until the 1970s, that part of central New Jersey was a somewhat decaying industrial area--the big employer in Piscataway was the Trojan factory (yes, that Trojan). However, since Edison is on the Northeast Corridor rail mainline, all the towns like Edison have largely become New York City bedroom communities, and there are also extensive offices near places like the Metropark Train Station in Iselin. Thus Edison and surrounding communities are much better off today than they were in the early 1970s.

Today, with public education under tremendous financial pressure, and presidential candidates suggesting that school janitors should be replaced by 9 year old students, it seems otherworldly to think that America used to value and fund public education, but such was the case. Middlesex County College must have been planned in the 1950s, and by the time it opened in '64 it would have provided an opportunity for Middlesex County students to go to college for free. The only criteria for admission would have been residency, and there would have been practically no fees. My New Jersey cousins had moved to California by the time they were of college age in the 1970s, but they all would have gone to Middlesex County College had they stayed. They were all smart and hard working, and junior college allowed them to attend the first two years of college essentially for free (in their case, Foothill College in Los Altos, birthplace of the Chocolate Watch Band). Having succeeded, my cousins could get financial aid to go to an established four year school. Without places like Middlesex County College, many of the less well-off students in the County would have had no opportunity to progress.

College Entertainment Budgets
Up until the mid 1970s, the assumption of almost all colleges was that there was more to student life than merely attending class. Most colleges had some kind of budget for student entertainment. Many performers of all types made good money playing the college circuit, and certain booking agents specialized in these sorts of engagements. Outside entertainment was considered especially important for colleges that were somewhat isolated from big cities, particularly in places where cold weather made travel ill-advised. It was taken for granted that colleges would bring in "name" entertainment for student enjoyment. This included drama, jazz, folk and other kinds of events, and from the mid-60s onwards it often included rock music as well.

The Grateful Dead were always looking for paying bookings, and they rapidly caught on to the benefits of playing colleges. In the 1960s, a common dynamic was that a few longhaired hippies would get themselves put on the college "entertainment committee" and get their favorite band booked. This often lead to the Grateful Dead (and other groups) playing small places for a modest number of students, such as at Alfred State College (May 1, 1970), because the show was paid for from university funds, not ticket sales per se. By 1970, with Cutler managing the Dead's touring schedule, colleges were a regular part of any Dead tour.
The college bookings for the Dead in 1970 were

(I have not counted free or unscheduled concerts at MIT (May 6) and possibly at Paterson (Oct 12), as this post is about bookings)

While some of these college events were on weekends at schools in major metropolitan areas, and no doubt included many non-students in the audience, some of the events are considerably more out of the way. JGMF discovered, for example, that the Alfred State show was a term-ending event attended by a few hundred people. Junior college shows at Kirkwood, MO (May 14) and Wayne, NJ (October 12) show that the Dead were willing to take paying gigs any time it fit their schedule. Some of the events were unique to the schools, as well: the Fairfield "Clam Jam" was a giant beach party, and the Penn show (October 16) was actually the homecoming dance for nearby Drexel University (alternate rows were reserved for Drexel students and their apparently stunned dates, while regular Philly Deadheads filled the rest of the seats).

Thus, however, unlikely a show at tiny Middlesex College in sleepy Edison, NJ, may seem from this distant remove, it fits in very snugly with the Grateful Dead's college heavy touring schedule at the time. What might the event have been?

Middlesex College had only been opened in 1964. Although the school serves 11, 800 students today, it probably served considerably fewer in those days. The current configuration of Community Colleges tends to orient towards a lot of part-time and returning students, often taking classes in a variety of professional skills that are not always directly related to degree programs. In their initial formulation, however, junior colleges were still more focused on the full time student body that was making academic plans to continue onwards with their education. Many, if not most, junior college in the 1960s would have had budgets for student entertainment. Thus a Sunday night show at Middlesex, probably in a relatively tiny gym, was probably an end-of-term dance. I doubt there was any advertising except in the school paper, and the event was probably not reviewed except perhaps there as well.The event probably started at 7pm--it was Sunday--and the Dead probably played a couple of sets, with no opening acts, and the event was probably over by 11:00pm. While I can only speculate, I doubt that the New Riders of The Purple Sage were booked for a set. My own guess is that the Dead got $5000 or less. If my supposition is correct, why would the Dead plan an unpublicized event for well below their usual fee? The answer seems to lie in their touring schedule for November 1970.

The Grateful Dead Touring Schedule, November 1970
Sam Cutler's reorganization of the Grateful Dead's touring (described in his 2008 book You Can't Always Get What You Want) was helping the Dead climb out of the financial hole that Lenny Hart had put them in, but the band was far from out of the woods. The group had released the successful Workingman's Dead album in June, and that, along with the newly released American Beauty, would help to introduce the band to a new and broader audience. However, those records had not yet reaped the financial rewards that they would later, so the band was still struggling. A mark of that struggle was the fact that the November 1970 Eastern tour was, to my knowledge, one of the last tours where the Dead would go out without their own sound system. Most rock bands saved on expenses by not touring with a sound system, but most bands were far more willing to be at the mercy of whatever sound reinforcement the promoter provided.

The Dead were apparently very unhappy about touring without their own PA (they would have had their own amps and guitars, of course), but it meant that the band was touring with considerably fewer crew members and the related expenses. The key booking on this tour was a four-night stand at the newly-opened 46th Street Rock Palace in Brooklyn, a new competitor to Bill Graham's Fillmore East. The band was playing there from November 11-14, Wednesday thru Saturday. The terms of the contract would have prevented them from playing an advertised show within a certain radius of New York City, a radius that certainly would have included northern New Jersey. The next weekend the Dead were playing Rochester (Friday Nov 20) and Boston (Saturday Nov 21), well outside of the restricted area. However, the Dead's last date on the tour was on Monday, November 23, playing at New York's old Anderson Theater at a party for the Hell's Angels. While the Angels party would have been nominally open to the public--although many cautious civilians would have been unwilling to attend such an event--it would not have been advertised as a Grateful Dead show, just as a Hells Angels party.

More importantly, the Hells Angels would have paid cash to the Grateful Dead, cash that the Grateful Dead would have very much needed at the time. Given that the band was playing a show in Boston on Saturday night (Nov 21) and Manhattan on Monday (Nov 23), they would have had to spend Sunday night somewhere. Any money they earned Sunday night would have covered travel expenses that would have had to be paid anyway. Even if the Dead played a junior college dance at well below their usual fee, earning a few thousand dollars was a few thousand more than they would have earned hanging around Manhattan.

Geography: Newark Airport
Edison, NJ is less than half an hour down the New Jersey Turnpike from Newark Airport (Edison is Exit 10, the airport is Exit 13). Since the Grateful Dead were touring without a PA, the band would merely have had to fly from Boston to Newark, and get themselves on down to Middlesex College. There would have been no concern about the equipment truck and possibly daunting winter weather, just a short plane ride with the guitars and amps as luggage. The band was going to have to fly to New York anyway for the Monday night show, so by flying into Newark and playing the gig in Edison, the evening's work was close to free money, even if it didn't pay that much. Thus it seems the shrewd Cutler found a gig for the band on an open Sunday night that minimized travel and travel expenses, and turned even a layover into a winning financial proposition by playing some sort of Junior College dance.

I feel confident that there was little or no publicity for the Grateful Dead's appearance at Middlesex County College on Sunday, November 22. It is likely that only Middlesex College students and their guests were allowed in, and tickets were not sold to the general public. My cousin, then a High School junior in Piscataway, NJ, was certainly not aware of the event. He would not become a Dead fan until he moved to California 18 months later (I took care of that, with a little help from the show at Maples Pavilion on February 9, 1973). Nonetheless, if he and his friends had been aware of a major Fillmore East rock band playing one town over, they would have been there, because no one played New Jersey save for Asbury Park, and they would have found a way to sneak in. I realize that this doesn't constitute definitive proof of anything, but its at least an indicator that the teenage population of Middlesex County was unaware of a Grateful Dead show.

A shot of the interior of the Middlesex County College gym in February 2012. I think the scale and footprint of the gym are probably the same as they were in 1970, but I think the gym has long since been remodeled

What Really Happened?
Did the Grateful Dead play a show at Middlesex County College, in Edison, NJ on Sunday, November 22, 1970? At this time, I cannot definitively say whether they did or not. However, the primary purpose of this blog is to assess the uncertain, and to try and analyze what was more or less likely to have actually occurred, so with that in mind, let us consider the context of the presumed Edison show, since context is all we have:

The November 22, 1970 Edison show appeared on the original Janet Soto list, and shows on that list appear to have been based on contracts. Thus it is very likely that the Edison show was scheduled, and fairly likely that it actually occurred

It is likely that the Edison show was an unpublicized school event at a junior college, but those sorts of shows were still common for the Grateful Dead during 1970

The Grateful Dead's touring schedule in November 1970 left them with an open Sunday night on the 22nd, where even a low-paying gig would have made financial sense

Since the Dead were not touring with their own sound system, probably for the last time, a quick trip from Newark Airport to Edison was a viable proposition even in the winter

I think the Grateful Dead played a student event at Middlesex County College on Sunday, November 22, 1970. I think the event started at about 7pm or so, and the Dead played a couple of hours. I doubt the New Riders of The Purple Sage played, although I wouldn't be surprised if Dawson or Nelson contributed some vocals at some point. Here's to hoping that long-ago residents of Middlesex County, from Edison or Plainsboro or Piscataway, perhaps former employees at the Trojan factory, have a flashback or two about a time when the Grateful Dead dropped in on a Sunday night.

I see no reason to discount the 11/22/70 show. Hopefully some intrepid readers can fill us in. And, if anyone is in the area and wants to dig a little bit, most universities keep archives that might shed some light, as well.

I was just re-reading the November 1970 Dead itinerary here, and realizing how often we (or I) retread the same ground...yikes.

Anyway, for what it's worth, a couple people on dead.net claim to have been at this show: http://www.dead.net/show/november-22-1970

One says, "I actually attended this college the year before, when Gary Puckett and the Union Gap appeared...so when the time to vote next year's concert came around, all of us Deadheads got together and voted for the Dead, and we got them." That would seem to confirm that this was a student event (perhaps Thanksgiving-related).

And the other, "It was hot as hell in that gym... I remember NRPS better than the Dead, cuz of all the covers....I remember "Hard To Handle" and what a presence Pigpen had." So it seems NRPS was there - which would make sense, since we know they were at the shows before & after. I am also pretty sure this comment is for real because how could a non-attendee know the show was in a gym?

Deadbase X also lists a Good Lovin' on this date, so someone must have contributed that to them.

One of the things I struggle with is how to index dates. I have sometimes wondered whether it might not make sense (for me) to use tags such as YYYYMMDD. It will cause proliferation of tags and make the tag display (in Blogger's righthand panel) less useful in some senses. But it would be nice if, everytime I wrote about a show, I could leave a tag such as 19701123. Or I could just try to keep track in some other way. But I do worry that we (collectively) aren't optimally keeping track of what we have already written about.

LIA, that was great detective work to come up with those entries. So it sounds like we know the show happened, we know it was in the gym and we know the Riders played (much to my surprise). It also confirms my theory that students had a chance to influence the choice of the Dead.

JGMF, I don't find tags very useful as a means of finding a particular post I'm looking for. (And the tag cloud on your site is already of daunting size!) Adding a 'search this blog' function is much more useful. And as far as finding something that might've been discussed in a comment thread somewhere or other, well, that's all but impossible... Forgetfulness, though, is the main thing that helps me lose track. I frequently forget what I've written on my own blog!

And, coming back to Corry's quest for obscure show flashbacks, sometimes these things get written in the most unlikely places & it takes either chance or determined digging to find them. For instance, someone commenting on one of Blair Jackson's recent dead.net blog entries described the 5/9/70 Worcester show they went to. Now, that show has been written about practically nowhere as it's a semi-"lost" show, so it's a valuable memory, but pretty much impossible to find except by accident!

One of the things I am consciously trying to do is to build posts like this one as a sort of focused repository for bits of memories and insights about specific 'lost' shows. At least, if someone searched "Grateful Dead" + Edison = 1970, my post would turn up on the first search page. I am amazed at how after some time has passed, all sorts of memories and details begin to surface.

I tend to enter obscure little bits in my spreadsheet when I find them (the key info and the URL), but there's always slippage in the data entry.

I agree about the tag cloud. I guess I was thinking that, as one can do with dead.net, it'd make it easy for me to search in the sense that I could find stuff by trial and error, as follows:

http://jgmf.blogspot.com/search/label/YYYYMMDD. So, if I had confidence in my own carefulness with it, I could plug in 19701123 and come up with all of the shows that I had tagged with that date. It probably won't work. I have also tried going back and putting stuff into an etree list (which has the advantage of already having metadata on Garcia stuff). That has the further advantage of putting everything in one place, where I can see it. But, again, the data entry is tough.

I guess there's no way around the fact that we'll do work, forget we did it, and end up re-doing it!

Oh yeah. LIA, you said "Adding a 'search this blog' function is much more useful."

I have just added this. I am curious if it works better than the little search box I see at the top left, in the little Blogger ribbon that I have when am logged in. I have found that search box to be totally unreliable.

i can say for sure. my brother-in-law was working for them on their tour and he came by our house in Highland Park since he was in town. It was a huge deal for us because my older brothers and sisters were huge fans. He says it got a little crazy because the venue was pretty small. I remember him telling me that one of them (Phil I think) had to pick up a mic stand to push the crowd back.

I was a student at MCC and was at the concert . I was with student security for the event . There were 8.5" X 11" xeroxed flyers of the Dead show hung around the campus that were printed in the schools library . It was true it was very hot and crowded in the gym which the outside and the inside looked very much the same as in the pics shown here. We were checking student ID's as it was a student with guest event only , not open to the public.

radioman, thanks so much for finally confirming this. I love the idea that somewhere out there, in a box, under a college diploma, is a xeroxed Grateful Dead flyer for Nov 22 '70 that no one has seen since that day.

Since you have confirmed that it was students only (plus their guests), that explains why there have been no eyewitness accounts or tapes until now. It's also interesting to hear that the gym layout hasn't changed that much.

I attended the Grateful Dead concert at Middlesex County Community College in Edison, NJ on Sunday evening Nov 22, 1970. I've looked for concert tapes of this show for many years. Not sure if any tapes even exist, Flyers for this show were displayed in New Brunswick, NJ just a few miles away days before the show. At that time, I was a student at Rutgers Univ. in New Brunswick and hitchhiked with a friend up to Edison to see the Dead. We arrived at about 3PM and were one of the first 4 or 5 people to show up at the doors to the MCC gym where the concert was held. We stood outside in the cold until the doors opened at about 6 PM. The New Riders of the Purple Sage opened the show for the Dead. Both the New Riders and the Dead played on the MCC gym floor since there was no stage. I sat on the gym floor about 10 feet away from the band directly in front of Jerry Garcia. The Dead played an entire set from their latest album, American Beauty, plus a number of songs from Workingman's Dead. The Dead also played a cover of a Rolling Stones song, Connection, which I've never seen on any official release by the Dead, or even on any concert tape. It was a great show.

Mike, thank you so much for this detailed account. It is gratifying indeed to not only get absolute confirmation of the event, but to hear about what the event was really like.

Sadly, the Dead did not regularly tape shows during this period, so the chances of a tape are pretty slim (although one from Cleveland the month before just turned up last year). However, I remain hopeful that one of those flyers is sitting in someone's desk drawer at their parents' house, waiting to be found.

The "Connection" cover is another spectacular detail. Besides the fact that Garcia and Weir were big Stones' fans, "Connection" was done regularly by the New Riders in the 72-73 era, so the song was surely around. I wouldn't be surprised if the Riders had played it with Jerry, as well. In 1970, many cover versions appeared in Dead sets for the first time, some to stay for decades ("El Paso") and some were never heard again ("My Babe"). Do you recall if Garcia or Weir sang it, or if they just shared the vocals like the Riders did?

The lead vocal on "Connection" was sung by Jerry Garcia. And regardless of the official "MCC students only" policy, I personally knew at least 25 other Rutgers U. students who also attended without MCC chaperones. I'm sure there were many more Rutgers students who I didn't see or recognize.

I saw electric Hot Tuna at Middlesex County Community College about two years after the Dead played there. It was Oct 1972...about two weeks after I saw my first Dead show 9/28/72 at the Stanley Theatre in Jersey City. That gym at MCCC got wicked hot!

I was at this show in 1970. The NRPS opened for the Dead first time I saw the New Riders - last time was Saturday August 9th at the Wonder Bar in Asbury Park. 44 years listening to "Henry." There was no stage. We stood a dozen feet away from the bands and watched them play. I was student at Livingston College/Rutgers - the radical college - a few miles away from MCC. There were flyers for the show and it was well attended - the auditorium was pretty full.